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Bon Air Lawn Service -- Revamped
Old 01-30-2004, 04:13 PM Bon Air Lawn Service -- Revamped
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Alright, I took most of your suggestions from the previous thread and edited backgrounds, fonts, etc. I removed the animated gifts and am going to soon replace them with Flash images... maybe even the entire site.

Previous Thread (archived)
http://www.webmaster-talk.com/archives/topic/4283.html

Website Address:
http://www.bonairlawnservice.biz
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Old 01-31-2004, 06:12 PM It's informative.....
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You've got the most important part of the website nailed: the content, there's loads of it and, although I'm no lawn expert, it seems to be of good quality. But...
It hangs on the presentation. Perhaps what youv'e got is good enough for your needs to present your business on the internet, but after all this is a forum for webdesign so I'll give you my honest opinion:

My impression is that the site lacks a professional feel, it feels like some (I'm not intending to be rude here) amateur personal home page (not thinking of the content, just the visual feel.) My personal opinion is that a companys web site should feel professional to represent some seriousity. This is perhaps not as important when promoting a lawn service, but it is of the biggest importance if you're planning of some kind of webshop. I know that I would never shop from a webshop with an amateur feel.

Here is a couple of advises that might help you:
1. I'm annoyed by scrolling in the middle of pages, it makes me not read what's inside the box. Say goodbye to the keeping the entire website visible at once, Scrolling the entire site is much less annoying than scrolling a box in the middle. And it makes the content easier to read aswell beacuse it allows you to use a bigger font.

2. Try to make some kind of border between the menu and the content.

3. Use some style sheets to make your links another colour, the standard underlined blue is not very pro

4. The menu and the content should start at the bottom of the top logo.

5. Try to use an earhtly colour sheme with some background and text coulour, for instance a dim green coulour in the back with brown text, but make shure its easy on the eyes.

6. When I first entered your site I was really confused by the menu:
You should try to make a menu in several levels, so that the main levels is visible first: home, main info, services, lawn care tips and links. And then when you clicked on one of the main items the sub items becomes visible. I believe that there are some free Java scripts that you can implement that can do this for you.

I hope this was of some help,
take a look on other business sites to get a feel for what it should feel like when you enter it.
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Old 01-31-2004, 06:27 PM Looks good.
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Hey nice work. the site is looking better, I wish I had your content generating traffic from search engines sure would be easier.
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Old 02-01-2004, 09:06 PM
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I think your menu is the biggest of your problems. I think you would be good to go for a javascript menu or even you could try this: Have it set up in levels. have all your main levels visible at the start and whenever you go to one of those levels only then display your next options and have a description on main section what it is for. I'm going to say what I don't like below:

1) The border, I just think it constricts the page too much, there is no room for things to grow in any shape or form. I like borders, just not over the whole page.
2) I think you should seperate your menu from the rest of the page, at the minute it attracts too much attention and you don't notice the actual content.

I will say you are in a better situation than most web designers (myself especially) you have the content, just got to make it look nice and pleasing.
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Old 02-02-2004, 12:39 AM hi
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hi,
your site really needs to be re designed. Its got great content but lacks in visual appeal. Some of your links are not working also.
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Old 02-02-2004, 12:42 AM
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you can download a dead link checker to test your sites links.
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Old 02-03-2004, 11:38 PM
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Hey SmokingTequila...MUCH better. I see you got rid of your 30-someodd table cells.

Load time is fairly short on DSL...but I'm concerned about your title graphic. It's 88 KB! That will definitely cause some lag time on 56k. You can convert that png to a gif or jpg and cut that file size in less than a third.

As with before, I won't argue with others about your content. You've got lots of it, and now, it's a lot easier to make out what that content says.

One thing about your tables and text. You have your table width set to percentages, which is all well and good, but the text within that main content cell doesn't wrap nicely on 800x600 (looks geat on 1024x768). You have hard-coded line breaks in there, I would suggest taking those out, and letting your paragraphs wrap naturally.

I'll also recommend finding another color for your links and visited links. The default blue and purples don't really match your site. You can try using http://www.colorschemer.com/online to find a nice complimentary match.

I think the font (Times) could be changed also. Whereas in print, the serifs (little ticks at the ends of the letters) help guide the eye from letter to letter, it is the opposite for reading on screen. Not so much for small bits of text here and there, and <H1> titles because the font sizes are larger. But for large bodies of text, I would change the fonts to Arial, Verdana, or some other sans-serif font, just for ease of readability. Besides, you'd be surprised at how much more "professional" a feel a site will have by simply changing the font.

As for your nagivation, it's simple, and (for the most part) effective. However, I would suggest taking the bullets off the main links/section titles (home, main info, services, tips, and links)...and maybe even another line break in between each section to identify that, yes, these are different sections, and, "look here, I even have sub-sections".
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Old 02-04-2004, 04:16 PM
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Alright all, thanks for your tips! I'm working on the code right now; it'll be re-uploaded once I finish. I'm in the process of changing link colours (visited and non), editing the navigation, changing fonts, etc. I'll also redo the way that the text wraps; I put in the breaks myself because it was coming too close to the border (it didn't look too good). I'll just add another table cell in there, maybe just a 15px width.

Also, just FYI, the first design wasn't hand coded, so it was a little wild with the table cells.

Thanks again for all of your suggestions!
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Old 02-04-2004, 05:02 PM
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Smoking,
I like the way you have your site set up. The only change I would make is the Mulch section. I would have the links, Black Mulch, ect come up in a new window. A window the size of the picture of the mulch. That's my two cents worth.
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